List No. 13 - Horror Movie Survival Guide

This is the best of two lists that circulate endlessly on the internet. The first one I have had since 1993, when I found it on a bulletin board (aka BBS). The second one had many of the same items, and some new ones. As always with these lists, attribution if difficult, if not an outright joke...

When it appears that you have killed the monster, *never* check to see if it's really dead.

Never read a book of demon summoning aloud, even as a joke.

Do not search the basement, especially if the power has just gone out.

If your children speak to you in Latin or any other language which they do not know, or if they speak to you using a voice which is other than their own, shoot them immediately. It will save you a lot of grief in the long run. It will probably take several rounds to kill them, so be prepared.

When you have the benefit of numbers, *never* pair off or go it alone.

As a general rule, don't solve puzzles that open portals to Hell.

If appliances start operating by themselves, move out.

Do not take anything from the dead.

Don't fool with recombinant DNA technology unless you're sure you know what you are doing.

If you're running from the monster, expect to trip or fall down at least twice, more if you are of the female persuaion. Also note that, despite the fact that you are running and the monster is merely shambling along, it's still moving fast enough to catch up with you.

If your companions suddenly begin to exhibit uncharacteristic behavior such as hissing, fascination for blood, glowing eyes, increasing hairiness, and so on, get away from them as fast as possible.

If your car runs out of gas at night, do not go to the nearby deserted- looking house to phone for help.

Beware of strangers bearing tools such as chainsaws, staple guns, hedge trimmers, electric carving knives, combines, lawnmowers, butane torches, soldering irons, band saws, or any device made from deceased companions.

When something bad is chasing you, bear in mind that when you try to start your car, no matter how reliable the vehicle is normally, you'll have to crank the engine over many times before it will fire up.

People arriving to rescue you generally get ambushed by the monster, so don't rely on them as your only means of escape. In fact, expect to be surprised and delayed by encountering their flayed corpse at some point.

If you realize that the people in your town/county are having their minds taken over by some strange force, alien or otherwise: DO NOT call the police as they are A) either already taken over themselves and will turn you in or B) Will not believe you and laugh at you. Either way, you must handle the problem yourself.

If a small band of children appear to be smarter then the adults that are around them, be cautious. If they stay together in a small, secretive group, and display nothing but hostility towards their elders, authority, and the church, leave town at once. If you wish to stay, be as kind to the children as possible, but expect to die anyways because you are inferior to them.

When you land on a distant planet and find some objects that look like eggs, leave them alone.

When one of your spaceship's crew finds a hideous parasite attached to his body (as a result of disobeying the previous rule), don't let him back on the ship. The guy's dogmeat anyway.

When a hideous alien menace is hunting you (as a result of disobeying the previous two rules) never wander off alone to hunt for the ship's cat.

If you manage to lose a few body parts along the way, don't despair. Take this opportunity to replace them with weapons, such as chainsaws, harpoons, etc.

If you are a female, never show your breasts, easy women are expendable.

If you are using a gun to combat the all-comsuming evil, it is a good idea to quickly find a new means of defense, because no matter how much ammo you have, you'll run out just before you kill the monster.

If you are wounded by flesh-eating zombies, aboandon all hope, because sooner or later, no matter how many antibiotics you take, yer gonna become one of 'em.

If you're the the last main character left, and a bunch of people are hunting the monster, DON'T stand out in the open, because you will immediately be mistaken for the monster.

Don't open the closed door, especially if you hear scratching, heavy breathing, or any other strange noises from the other side.

While in a horror film, never bathe, especially when in the house alone.

In terms of weaponry and general equipment for fighting the monster, never rely on any tool more complicated than a pointed stick. Generators will inexplicably run out of power, just as the nasty space-vegetable climbs onto your jury rigged electrical grid. Just when you've got the ghoul lined up in your sights, your gun will invariably jam.

The Rain In Seattle

A newcomer to Seattle arrives on a rainy day. He gets up the next day and it's raining. It rains the day after that, and the day after that. He goes out to lunch, sees a young kid, and asks out of despair "Hey kid, does it ever stop raining around here?"

The kid says, "How do I know? I'm only six."

The Gates, 25 Years Later

click to enlarge

After all this time, Christo finally got his gates up in Central Park. The gates are hung with a gorgeous looking saffron-colored fabric. The amazing thing to me is that Christo wanted to do this while I still lived in NYC--he first proposed it in 1979! And now, he has succeeded, putting up something like $20 million he and his partner Jeanne-Claude raised. The gates will be up two weeks. My friend Kevin lives right near the park. I will see if I can get him to pass along a first hand report. Are they as cool as they seem, or after 25 years, is it just a snoozer? /jack
---o0o---

What Happened To Mad Scientists?

The British government Tuesday licensed the creator of Dolly the sheep to clone early-stage human embryos for a study of degenerative diseases, re-igniting a sharp debate in the United States about the future of stem cell research. (http://www.newsday.com/news/health/ny-hsclon0209,0,2485639.story?coll=ny-health-headlines)

Why have mad scientists almost disappeared from our movies now? Why indeed: because they're madly working away at their nefarious schemes right here, right now. They live! There are still a few mad scientists in film: in The Re-Animator, or in Sam Raimi's Darkman for example. On the whole, however, the mad scientists are a cliché, and they are disappearing.

Real life mad science is in full bloom in the 21st century. It's not all that different from what the mad scientists were doing in those 30s and 40's movies! Doctors can transplant organs and limbs from one body to another, and even among mammals--we harvest pig organs for spare parts now. The basic programming of life is being mastered. We cloned Dolly the sheep. She was not perfect, but they did clone her. The very code of the human genome has been cracked.

Robots of all sorts have been manufactured, and people now buy them as toys, or even pets. Nanomachines the size of molecules have been created and some of them combine biological and mechanical parts. What once was heresy is now business as usual. We won't know where all this is leading until it is too late. Maybe we're on the right path...we used to burn people at the stake for thinking the world was round. Maybe one of these cloners and modern day Victor Frankensteins is the Copernicus of our time?
---o0o---

Poem: the wrong shoes

Who is that down there?

a person less than unwanted
who met up with the wrong cobbler:
full fathom five

under roiled dark waters
someone's father lies
wearing concrete loafers

and startled eyes.
I don't think he's waving
but his hands move back and forth. ---000---

digital painting--> Flag No. 18: Old Glory

Click to enlarge. (c) 2005 by Jack.

digital painting: Man With Gun

click to enlarge

What The F*** Mr. President??

My wife pointed out an article in the New York Times yesterday. She knew it would make me crazy.

This is like coming home and finding your 80 year old mother in a frenzied sex orgy, with bongs, kegs, and 130 decibels of Crunk pumping through the speakers.

The NY Times article claimed that POTUS not only read, but enthusiastically recommends to friends I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe. I thought Charlotte was a very very good novel (which puts me in the critical minority). It's shocking, however, that The President would be such a fan.

Charlotte contains long passages about the contemporary usage of the word f**k, scenes where religion is mocked, dozens of passages of marijuana, cocaine, and ecstasy use, disquisitions on oral sex, casual sex, drinking, cheating in school, corruption in the university, long passages mocking morality, chastity, and sportsmanship, and many many gallons of beer, wine, and Vodka. The pivotal chapter of the book details the date rape of Charlotte Simmons by a fraternity rat.

I am utterly baffled as to what The President would find to love in the book, at least in light of his public persona. The article speculates it may be a hearkening back to his hard partying fraternity days at Yale.

The official list of books The President reads does not include Tom Wolfe. The White House press office will tell you his favorite books are currently His Excellency: George Washington by Joseph J. Ellis (a great book, by the way), Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow, and, of course, The Bible.

I keep thinking someone buffaloed the New York Times and we'll read a retraction of the story tomorrow. I just can't wrap my head around this one, it's so weird.
---o0o---

List No. 12: The Speed Of Animals

Speeds are in mph [1]

Cheetah 70
Pronghorn antelope 61
Wildebeest 50
Lion 50
Thomson's gazelle 50
Quarterhorse 47.5
Elk 45
Cape hunting dog 45
Coyote 43
Gray fox 42
Hyena 40
Zebra 40
Mongolian wild ass 40
Greyhound 39.35
Whippet 35.50
Rabbit (domestic) 35
Mule deer 35
Jackal 35
Reindeer 32
Giraffe 32
White-tailed deer 30
Wart hog 30
Grizzly bear 30
Cat (domestic) 30
Human 27.89
Elephant 25
Black mamba snake 20
Six-lined race runner 18
Wild turkey 15
Squirrel 12
Pig (domestic) 11
Chicken 9
Spider (T. atrica) 1.17
Giant tortoise 0.17
Three-toed sloth 0.15
Garden snail 0.03

[1] Most of these measurements are for maximum speeds over approximate quarter-mile distances. Exceptions are the lion and elephant, whose speeds were clocked in the act of charging; the whippet, which was timed over a 200-yard course; the cheetah, timed over a 100-yard distance; the human, timed for a 15-yard segment of a 100-yard run (of 13.6 seconds); and the black mamba, six-lined race runner, spider, giant tortoise, three-toed sloth, and garden snail, which were measured over various small distances.
Source: Natural History magazine, March 1974. Copyright © The American Museum of Natural History, 1974.

Poem: Daybreak

Our spiring sun sheds tons a day
But each still dawn
Clears the rooftops again
To roost with the morning stars.

The hills tumble down
Rock by rock
And the rivers zig
Where they used to zag.

Trees
Run
Rings
Around
Themselves.

Why do we call it sunrise,
When it's just earth
Rolling over
Like a dog?
---o0o---

Message In A Bottle

click to enlarge

The picture on the left went into space with one of our early interstellar craft. It explains where earth is [1], what homo sapiens looked like naked (like Barbie and Ken), and other information, like a diagram indicating the location of our sun.

Nasa's Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) has been working on this "Interstellar Outreach Program" for many years [2]. The gold-plated disk above, is a bronze record containing sounds and images of life on earth. Each of the two Voyagers is equipped with a record player of sorts--with a cartridge, even--to play the disk, and recover the images.

The two circles in the bottom right side of the record show the two lowest states of a hydrogen atom. The vertical lines on the circles show the spin moment of the electron and proton. And (is this cool, or what?) the transition time from one state to the next provides the fundamental clock reference used in ALL the cover diagrams and the images to be decoded from binaries.

Carl Sagan and a team of other folks designed and selected the Voyager's messages and data. The disk includes a greeting in 55 different languages, from Aramaic to Vietnamese. The record also includes a sampler of non-human Earth sounds such as wind, rain, surf, chimps, sheep, crickets, saws, and trains. It contains photos as well, and maps, diagrams of DNA, vertebrate anatomy charts, chemical and mathematical definitions, and other visual displays. The disk includes Beethoven, a Chuck Berry tune (Johnny B, Goode), Bach and Mozart, a Navajo chant, Indian Ragas, and a Louis Armstrong recording. There are 116 binary images on the record.

No one know if the aliens who find this will be able to use it, or decode the information. Will they even have hands? Opposable thumbs? Will they even think in any path parallel to ours? Will the disk just look like gibberish to them? Their scientists--if they have science (and we assume they must)--may need to study the disk for a couple of thousand years before they make a breakthrough.

A book titled Murmurs of the Earth, writtten by Sagan and colleagues, was reissued in 1992 with a CD-ROM compilation of the Golden Record, and a description of its creation. It's out of print, but you can pick up a copy fairly cheaply.

The movie Starman portrayed the Voyager Golden Record being located by an extra-terrestial intelligence who subsequently sent one of their own race to investigate intelligent life on Earth.

Don't hold your breath that any of our cousins in other galaxies will find this and come to visit. The Voyager will not come close to another star for something like 40,000 years. But then again, when you're dealing with our alien cousins Out There, 40,000 years may just be a sneeze in the winds of time.

[1] Or, maybe by the time it is found, where earth was.
[2] We also regularly beam messages out into the void, and hopefully, to our alien cousins, through our Arecibo observatory in Puerto Rico.
---o0o---

A Flag For The New Democracy

Click image to enlarge
(C) 2005 Jack Brummet